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Friday, February 6, 2015

If NBC uses the Dan Rather standard, it’ll force Brian Williams to resign

By Marc Jampole

If NBC follows the Dan Rather standard, it will either force Brian Williams to resign or fire him. Williams is the NBC news anchor who for years has said he rode a helicopter that underwent enemy fire during the ill-fated and disastrous Iraqi war. He has made the claim so many times that no apology or explanation can leave his reputation unstained.

Rather, most will remember, was the long-time CBS anchor who lost his job (excuse me—retired early!) because one of his producers failed to confirm a source. At the time Rather was the most well-known and well-respected television anchor in America. He fronted a report prepared by experienced and well-respected TV news producer Mary Mapes in a show called “60 Minutes Wednesday.” The topic: some memos purported to be written by a Lt. Col. Jerry B. Killian that proved once and for all that Bush II shirked his National Guard duty during the Vietnam War era.

Too bad the memos were
forgeries. After defending Rather and Mapes for about two weeks, CBS
admitted that the news team had inadequately investigated the memos. Mapes
was fired almost immediately, and Dan Rather, who was set to retire anyway,
went more quickly and less elegantly than previously planned.

The contrasts with the Brian Williams
case are striking: Rather did not lie, whereas Williams did. Rather’s report
was accurate in the whole, which is to say, a lot of evidence points to the
conclusion that George Jr. shrugged off his National Guard duties. Williams, by
contrast, was trying to pretend that he was a soldier instead of avoiding being
one.

Of course, NBC could follow the Fox News
standard, which is much looser regarding the factual content of stories and the
punishment reporters get for reporting false information, consciously or by
accident. Take the Shirley Sherrod scandal, for example. Now deceased Andrew Breitbart, an RWRBB
(right-wing rich-boy blogger), edited a video copy of a speech of Sherrod, an
African-American employee of the Federal Department of Agriculture, to make her
sound like a “Black racist” and posted it on his website. Fox ran the clip
numerous times. We soon learned that the RWRBB doctored the clip. Fox never
checked the accuracy; it probably could have easily seen the edits that
Breitbart made to twist Sherrod’s words. But no one was fired at Fox. Not
the anchor, not the producer, not a research assistant
who might be responsible for fact-checking or sourcing video. Now why is
that? Is it because journalistic ethics have declined in the decade since
the Rather firing or because Fox doesn’t really care about the accuracy of its
stories?

We should give NBC time to assimilate
and process the Williams admission of a long-time lie and the public’s reaction
to it. But at the end, if it keeps Williams, it puts itself in the same league
as Fox News.

Mainstream national news stations
distort the political scene in many ways: they select the experts and the
issues from a narrow political spectrum that is centrist looking rightward;
reduce everything to personalities; truncate coverage of real news in favor of
following celebrities; accept the Republican’s definition of the issues; argue
by anecdote instead of presenting the facts; stud their stories with hidden
messages supporting consumerism and belittling intellectual achievement; and give
the wrong side of long-settled issues like vaccination and global warming equal
opportunity to spread their ignorance.

But the national mainstream news
media rarely tell an out-and-out lie that they know is a lie. Fox does, which
makes the NBC decision to fire or not to fire Brian Williams so interesting to
observe.

1 comment:

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If it weren’t for the entertainment value, I’d be pleased that Texas Governor Rick Perry is foundering in the Republican presidential race. After all, Governor Perry, who is in an unprecedented fourth term as chief executive of the nation's second-largest state, still might get the Republican nomination for president. If that happens there’s no telling what the voters might be fooled into doing. Just look at how far George W. Bush got.